Staff Editorial writer Jill Burcum wrote on American Nations, the Vice Presidential picks, and the state of U.S. democracy
Minnesota Star-Tribune staff columnist Jill Burcum interviewed Nationhood Lab director Colin Woodard on the state of the U.S. presidential race, the plight of American democracy and the political implications of American Nations, his book about U.S. regionalism. Her story appeared Oct. 31 and is entited “‘‘You’ve got to have an answer for why [the U.S.] should stay together.’”
Woodard spoke about the net benefits of each of the Vice Presidential nominees via a regional lens — Walz a plus for Harris, Vance giving nothing to Trump he didn’t already have — and the recent failure of the Midlands to act as a check on political extremism, as it has in the past.
“Woodard’s book is a reminder of what a fragile coalition the United States really is,” Burcum wrote. “Future leaders must bear this in mind. They will not only need to articulate policy but make a case for unity with wide appeal to the 11 nations.”
“You’ve got to have an answer for why we should stay together,” Woodard said, referring to the need for a national story, the core work of Nationhood Lab in 2024.
Burcum also wrote about American Nations for the Star-Tribune back in 2013, when the book was relatively new. Woodard wrote an essay for the paper on Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis in 2020.
The Minnesota (nee Minneapolis) Star-Tribune, founded in 1867, is the seventh largest print daily in the United States and is distributed across the Upper Midwest.
Nationhood Lab, a project at Salve Regina University’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, delivers more effective tools with which to describe and defend the American liberal democratic tradition and better understand the forces undermining it.